Jewish Peace News (JPN) is an information service that circulates news clippings, analyses, editorial commentary, and action alerts concerning the Israel / Palestine conflict. We work to promote a just resolution to the conflict; we believe that the cause of both peace and justice will be served when Israel ends the occupation, withdrawing completely from the Palestinian territories and finding a solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis within the framework of international law.

Monday, August 31, 2009

A new way of attempting to force relocation of the unwanted Negev Beduins is borrowed from the West Bank: A sole access road to the village of Amra is sealed off, and the dirt track which they must use to get in and out of their village is regularly blocked by temporary checkpoints."The stated goal is one of 'judaisation'", says Prof. Oren Yiftachel, a geographer at Ben Gurion University.

(Amra) -- The inhabitants of the Bedouin village of Amra have good reason to fear that the harsh tactics used by the Israeli army against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been imported to their small corner of Israel's Negev desert.

Over the summer, the Tarabin tribe, all of them Israeli citizens, have had the sole access road to their homes sealed off, while the dirt track they must use instead is regularly blocked by temporary checkpoints at which their papers and vehicles are inspected at length.

Coils of razor wire encircle much of the village, and children as young as eight have been arrested in a series of night-time raids.

"Four-fifths of our youngsters now have files with the police and our drivers are being repeatedly fined for supposed traffic violations," said Tulab Tarabin, one of Amra's 400 Bedouin inhabitants. "Every time we are stopped, the police ask us: 'Why don't you leave?'"

Lawyers and human rights activists say a campaign of pressure is being organised against the Tarabin at the behest of a nearby Jewish community, Omer, which is determined to build a neighbourhood for Israeli army officers on the tribe's land.

"The policy in Israel is that when Jews need land, the Bedouin must move - no matter how long they have been living in their homes or whether their communities predate Israel's creation," said Morad al Sana, a lawyer with the Adalah legal centre for Israel's Arab minority. "The Tarabin's crime is that they refuse to budge."

The 180,000 Bedouin in the Negev have never been welcome, says Oren Yiftachel, a geographer at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheva. They are descendants of a few thousand who managed to avoid expulsion from the southern semi-desert region during the 1948 war that founded Israel.

Many of the surviving Bedouin, including the Tarabin, were forcibly relocated from their extensive ancestral lands in the 1950s to an area close to the Negev's main city, Beersheva, Prof Yiftachel said. Israel declared the Bedouin lands as "state land" and established a series of overcrowded "townships" to house the tribes instead.

"The stated goal is one of 'Judaisation'," Prof Yiftachel added, referring to a long-standing policy of concentrating the rural Bedouin into urban reservations to free up land for Jewish settlement. About half of the Negev's Bedouin, some 90,000, have refused to move.

According to a recent report from the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the townships have "continuously ranked as the poorest, least developed and most crime-ridden towns in Israel".

The refuseniks, such as the Tarabin, have faced unrelenting pressure to leave their 45 rural communities, none of which is recognised by the state. The villagers endure "third world conditions", according to ACRI.

"The unrecognised villages are denied basic services to their homes, including water and electricity, and the villages themselves have no master plans," Mr al Sana said.

As a result, he added, the villagers are forced to live in tin shacks and tents because concrete homes are invariably destroyed by the authorities. In the past two years, several shacks as well as the local kindergarten in Amra have been demolished.

The stark contrast between the dusty encampment of Amra and the green lawns and smart villas of Omer, only a stone's throw away and the country's third wealthiest community, is unsettling even for some of Omer's 7,000 residents.

One, Yitzhak Nevo, a philosophy professor at Ben Gurion University and a leading activist with Dukium, a Negev coexistence group, said that, although the lands on which the Tarabin live fall under Omer's jurisdiction, the Bedouin have been entirely excluded. "Even though they live within Omer's municipal limits, their children get no education from us; our health clinic does not treat them; they are not hooked up to our water or electricity supplies and their refuse is not collected."

He said Amra had been treated as nothing more than an eyesore until the mid-1990s when the powerful mayor, Pinhas Badash, decided that the Tarabin were both harming property values and obstructing the town's expansion plans.

As Omer's new neighbourhoods reached the limits of Amra, Mr Badash stepped up the pressure on the villagers to leave. A few years ago he pushed through the building of a new community for the Tarabin away from Omer. Two-thirds of the tribe relocated, while the remainder fought the attempted eviction through the courts.

"It was a very dirty business in which those in the tribe who left first were offered cheap land on which to build while the rest were threatened that they would be offered nothing," Mr al Sana said.

Amra's remaining Bedouin have found themselves surrounded by a tall wire fence to separate them from Omer. Two gates, ordered by the courts to ensure the Bedouin continued to have road access through the town, were sealed this year.

Since the beginning of the summer police patrol Amra's side of the fence around the clock and the Tarabin report that a private security firm chases off any of them found inside Omer.

Nissim Nir, a spokesman for Mr Badash, denied that the Tarabin were being hounded. Omer made a generous offer to relocate them from their "illegal" site, he said.

Recently Mr Badash announced that thousands of acres around Omer would be forested with the intention of stopping the Bedouin from returning to the area once they had been evicted.

Mr Tarabin, 33, accused the police of being little more than hired hands carrying out Mr Badash's plan.

"We are being suffocated. There are night-time searches of our homes using bogus pretexts, and arrests of young children. We are photographed and questioned as we go about our business. At the roadblocks they endlessly check cars entering and leaving, and fines are issued. No one visits us unless they have to, and we stay home unless we have to leave."

He added: "Why is it so impossible for Omer to imagine allowing us to be a neighbourhood of the town?"

A report by Human Rights Watch last year severely criticised Israel's treatment of the Bedouin.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Guest editor Nancy Stoller, Research Professor in Community Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, writes:

After Neve Gordon's op ed supporting the international economic, cultural, and academic boycott of Israel was published in the LA Times on August 20, 2009, his words were attacked by Israel's Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar as "repugnant and deplorable." And President Rivka Carmi of Ben-Gurion University, where Gordon teaches politics, added that "Academics with such feelings about their country are welcome to look for another home, whether personal or professional."

They and others accused Gordon of a lack of respect for academic freedom. In the following Ha'aretz article, Anat Matar, Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, deconstructs the appeal to academic freedom by showing how this appeal is often used cynically. She details both the engagement of her own university in the occupation and Israel's on-going lack of concern for Palestinian academic freedom and basic education.

Incidentally the original title of Matar's article in Hebrew was "The Lie of Academic Freedom," not "Israeli academics must pay price to end occupation."

ANALYSIS / Israeli academics must pay price to end occupation By Anat Matar

Several days ago Dr. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times. In that article he explained why, after years of activity in the peace camp here, he has decided to pin his hopes on applying external pressure on Israel - including sanctions, divestment and an economic, cultural and academic boycott.

He believes, and so do I, that only when the Israeli society's well-heeled strata pay a real price for the continuous occupation will they finally take genuine steps to put an end to it.

Gordon looks at the Israeli society and sees an apartheid state. While the Palestinians' living conditions deteriorate, many Israelis are benefiting from the occupation. In between the two sides, Israeli society is sinking into complete denial - drawn into extreme hatred and violence. The academic community has an important role to play in this process. Yet, instead of sounding the alarm, it wakes up only when someone dares approach the international community and desperately call for help.

The worn-out slogan that everybody raises in this context is "academic freedom," but it is time to somewhat crack this myth.

The appeal to academic freedom was born during the Enlightenment, when ruling powers tried to suppress independent minded thinkers. Already then, more than 200 years ago, Imannuel Kant differentiated between academics whose expertise (law, theology, and medicine) served the establishment and those who had neither power nor proximity to power. As for the first, he said, there was no sense in talking about "freedom" or "independent thought" as any use of such terminology is cynical.

Since then, cynicism has spread to other faculties as well. At best academic freedom was perceived as the right to ask troubling questions. At worst was the right to harass whomever asked too much.

When the flag of academic freedom is raised, the oppressor and not the oppressed is usually the one who flies it. What is that academic freedom that so interests the academic community in Israel? When, for example, has it shown concern for the state of academic freedom in the occupied territories?

This school year in Gaza will open in shattered classrooms as there are no building materials there for rehabilitating the ruins; without notebooks, books and writing utensils that cannot be brought into Gaza because of the goods embargo (yes, Israel may boycott schools there and no cry is heard).

Hundreds of students in West Bank universities are under arrest or detention in Israeli jails, usually because they belong to student organizations that the ruling power does not like.

The separation fence and the barriers prevent students and lecturers from reaching classes, libraries and tests. Attending conferences abroad is almost unthinkable and the entry of experts who bear foreign passports is permitted only sparingly.

On the other hand, members of the Israeli academia staunchly guard their right to research what the regime expects them to research and appoint former army officers to university positions. Tel Aviv University alone prides itself over the fact that the Defense Ministry is funding 55 of its research projects and that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the U.S. Defense Department, is funding nine more. All the universities offer special study programs for the defense establishment.

Are those programs met with any protest? In contrast with the accepted impression, only few lecturers speak up decisively against the occupation, its effect and the increasingly bestial nature of the State of Israel.

The vast majority retains its freedom to be indifferent, up to the moment that someone begs the international community for rescue. Then the voices rise from right and left, the indifference disappears, and violence replaces it: Boycott Israeli universities? This strikes at the holy of holies, academic freedom!

The writer is a lecturer in Tel Aviv University's Department of Philosophy

John Greyson, a highly acclaimed filmmaker whose films, including Zero Patience (1993), Lilies (1996; winner of four Genie Awards, Canada's highest film prize), Fig Trees (a 2003 installation released as a film in 2009), and other films, decided last week to withdraw his new film Covered from the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) because of the Festival's decision to make Tel Aviv a focus of its programming this year. Greyson's nuanced yet explicit critique of the TIFF's programming choice, and the reasoning behind his decision to reject "Brand Israel" by withdrawing his film, are contained in his letter to the TIFF reprinted beneath the following JPN editorial commentary.

Because Greyson's letter raises the question of whether a boycott of Israeli products and institutions is strategic at present as an activist program, JPN editor Joel Beinin discusses the tactic more generally immediately below.

* * * * *

The tactic of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) has much to recommend it as a strategy for confronting the consolidation of Israeli apartheid. Aside from its positive association with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, it is undeniably a non-violent tactic that can be used by large numbers of people and adapted to many different situations. The Palestinian people certainly have every right to choose whatever method they decide is most effective to achieve their national rights,

It is precisely the flexibility of the BDS campaign that has aroused concern among some who have long supported Palestinian rights. The original 2005 call for BDS advocates applying these measures until Israel recognizes the Palestinian right to self- determination and complies with international law by

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

These goals leave open the question: Is BDS directed against the occupation? Or is BDS directed against the existence of the state of Israel (because, in fact, the entire state is built on occupied and colonized lands)? Some, who either do not care about this distinction or who express their political activism in intentionally provocative ways, may actually be weakening the BDS movement. It is impossible and undemocratic to suppress any of the voices in the emerging BDS movement. Mass movements usually contain many currents of opinion (as was the case in both the anti-apartheid struggle and the US Black freedom movement), and this is entirely legitimate. The best way to ensure that BDS is seen as a reasonable and effective strategy is if those who have carefully explained their approach to BDS (Neve Gordon or John Greyson or Udi Aloni's very carefully argued statements) emerge as the dominant force in the movement. The renowned author, John Berger, initiated a practice of specifying carefully what he did and did not mean by a cultural boycott in the letter he appended to the December 2005 statement of 94 authors, film-makers and others who advocated a cultural boycott of Israel <http://bit.ly/GR9Vb>. Naomi Klein has said that her own approach to the cultural boycott was influenced by John Berger.

One thing we should be clear about: BDS will not disrupt the momentum for a political resolution to the conflict. There is no such momentum. There is momentum for more process. The Israeli press seems to have concluded that Obama is no longer a problem and that Bibi has outsmarted him. It's not a question of intelligence, but rather that the Obama administration is not prepared to go as far as is necessary to compel even a full settlement freeze. But, if they had threatened to withdraw aid or even announced it was a possibility, i.e. a form of BDS, more progress might have been made. Governments will only take such measures when it is clear that there is popular support for them, and the BDS campaign is one way to establish that.

Joel Beinin

* * * * *

A letter from John Greyson to the Toronto International Film Festival:

I've come to a very difficult decision -- I'm withdrawing my film Covered from TIFF, in protest against your inaugural City-to-City Spotlight on Tel Aviv.

In the Canadian Jewish News, Israeli Consul General Amir Gissin described how this Spotlight is the culmination of his year-long Brand Israel campaign, which includes bus/radio/TV ads, the ROM's notorious Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, and "a major Israeli presence at next year1s Toronto International Film Festival, with numerous Israeli, Hollywood and Canadian entertainment luminaries on hand." Gissen said Toronto was chosen as a test-city for Brand Israel by Israel's Foreign Ministry, and thanked Astral, MIJO and Canwest for donating the million-dollar budget. (Astral is of course a long-time TIFF sponsor, and Canwest owners' Asper Foundation donated $500,000 to TIFF). "We've got a real product to sell to Canadians... The lessons learned from Toronto will inform the worldwide launch of Brand Israel in the coming years, Gissin said."

This past year has also seen: the devastating Gaza massacre of eight months ago, resulting in over 1000 civilian deaths; the election of a Prime Minister accused of war crimes; the aggressive extension of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands; the accelerated destruction of Palestinian homes and orchards; the viral growth of the totalitarian security wall, and the further enshrining of the check-point system. Such state policies have led diverse figures such as John Berger, Jimmy Carter, and Bishop Desmond Tutu to characterize this 'brand' as apartheid. Your TIFF program book may describe Tel Aviv as a "vibrant young city... of beaches, cafes and cultural ferment... that celebrates it's diversity," but it's also been called "a kind of alter-Gaza, the smiling face of Israeli apartheid" (Naomi Klein) and "the only city in the west without Arab residents" (Tel Aviv filmmaker Udi Aloni).

To my mind, this isn't the right year to celebrate Brand Israel, or to demonstrate an ostrich-like indifference to the realities (cinematic and otherwise) of the region, or to pointedly ignore the international economic boycott campaign against Israel. Launched by Palestinian NGO's in 2005, and since joined by thousands inside and outside Israel, the campaign is seen as the last hope for forcing Israel to comply with international law. By ignoring this boycott, TIFF has emphatically taken sides -- and in the process, forced every filmmaker and audience member who opposes the occupation to cross a type of picket line.

Let's be clear: my protest isn't against the films or filmmakers you've chosen. I've seen brilliant works of Israeli and Palestinian cinema at past TIFFs, and will again in coming years. My protest is against the Spotlight itself, and the smug business-as-usual aura it promotes of a "vibrant metropolis [and] dynamic young city... commemorating it's centennial", seemingly untroubled by other anniversaries, such as the 42nd anniversary of the occupation. Isn't such an uncritical celebration of Tel Aviv right now akin to celebrating Montgomery buses in 1963, California grapes in 1969, Chilean wines in 1973, Nestles infant formula in 1984, or South African fruit in 1991?

You're probably groaning right now -- "inflammatory rhetoric!" -- but I mention these boycott campaigns because they were specific and strategic to their historic moments, and certainly complex. Like these others, the Israel boycott has been the subject of much debate, with many of us struggling with difficult questions of censorship, constructive engagement and free speech. In our meeting, for instance, you said you supported economic boycotts like South Africa's, but not cultural boycotts. Three points: South Africa was also a cultural boycott (asking singers not to play Sun City); culture is one of Canada's (and Israel's) largest economic sectors (this spotlight is funded by a Canadian Ministry of Industry tourism grant, after all); and the Israel rebrand campaign explicitly targets culture as a priority sector. Many will still say a boycott prevents much needed dialogue between possible allies. That's why, like Chile, like Nestles, the strategic and specific nature of each case needs to be considered. For instance, I'm helping organize a screening in September for the Toronto Palestinian Film Festival, co-sponsored by Queers Against Israeli Apartheid and the Inside Out Festival. It's a doc that profiles Ezra Nawi, the queer Israeli activist jailed for blocking army bulldozers from destroying Palestinian homes. Technically, the film probably qualifies as meeting the technical criteria of boycott -- not because it was directed by an Israeli filmmaker, but because it received Israeli state funding. Yet all concerned have decided that this film should be seen by Toronto audiences, especially Jews and Palestinians -- a strategic, specific choice, and one that has triggered many productive discussions.

I'm sorry I can't feel the same way about your Tel Aviv spotlight. Despite this past month of emails and meetings, many questions remain for me about it's origins, it's funding, it's programming, it's sponsors. You say it was initiated in November 2008... but then why would Gissen seem to be claiming it as part of his campaign four months earlier? You've told me that TIFF isn't officially a part of Brand Israel -- okay – but why haven't you clarified this publicly? Why are only Jewish Israeli filmmakers included? Why are there no voices from the refugee camps and Gaza (or Toronto for that matter), where Tel Aviv's displaced Palestinians now live? Why only big budget Israeli state-funded features -- why not a program of shorts/docs/indie works by underground Israeli and Palestinian artists? Why is TIFF accepting and/or encouraging the support of the Israeli government and consulate, a direct flaunting of the boycott, with filmmaker plane tickets, receptions, parties and evidently the Mayor of Tel Aviv opening the spotlight? Why does this feel like a propaganda campaign?

This decision was very tough. For thirty years, TIFF has been my film school and my community, an annual immersion in the best of world cinema. You've helped rewrite the canon through your pioneering support of new voices and difficult ideas, of avant-garde visions and global stories. You've opened many doors and many minds, and made me think critically and politically about cinema, about how film can speak out and make a difference. In particular, you've been extraordinarily supportive of my own work, often presenting the hometown premieres of my films to your legendary audiences. You are three of the smartest, sharpest, skillful and most thoughtful festival heads anywhere -- this isn't hyperbole, with all of you I speak from two decades worth of friendship and deep respect -- which makes this all the more inexplicable and troubling.

What eventually determined my decision to pull out was the subject of Covered itself. It's a doc about the 2008 Sarajevo Queer Festival, which was cancelled due to brutal anti-gay violence. The film focuses on the bravery of the organizers and their supporters, and equally, on the ostriches, on those who remained silent, who refused to speak out: most notoriously, the Sarajevo International Film Festival and the Canadian Ambassador in Sarajevo. To stand in judgment of these ostriches before a TIFF audience, but then say nothing about this Tel Aviv spotlight -- finally, I realized that that was a brand I couldn't stomach.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

In his article, Matthew Cassel suggests that baseless organ theft accusations are a propaganda gift for Israel, and deflect attention from its well-documented war crimes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.Furthermore, if the Swedish government caves in to Israeli demands, it would set a frightening precedent for journalists whereby Israel can affect a state's policy regarding freedom of the press.

Racheli Gai.

Lincoln Shlensky adds:

It is hard to miss the evidence that the Swedish photojournalist Donald Bostrom aimed to vilify Israel when he wrote his article claiming that Israeli soldiers had kidnapped Palestinians to harvest and sell their internal organs, murdering them in the process. The article is chock-full of false assertions that, taken together, demonstrate that Bostrom was determined to spin the story as he wished, no matter what the reality.

One example I found of his deceptiveness is his claim that Israel, alone among Western nations, is the only country that "takes no legal measures against doctors participating in the illegal business" of organ theft. That may have been the case in 2003, which is when he cites a statement condemning it, but it is simply false to make that claim today. An article in Ha'aretz in 2006 makes reference to Israel's laws, passed that year, against organ traffic. Yet Bostrom's article discusses the absence of such laws as if this were true today.

The Swedish press, too, has raised red flags regarding the veracity of Bostrom's claims -- and his sources -- after a Jerusalem Post article indicated that the Palestinian families on whom Bostrom had relied in his report were distancing themselves from his claims. Bostrom, and the tabloid newspaper in which his article was published, have been accused of "racial agitation" in Sweden, based on laws that prohibit "statements which threaten or express contempt for one or more identified ethnic groups." While Bostrom's article may not run afoul of such a law, since it does not explicitly target Jews, one need merely read between the lines to see that, without a shred of legitimate evidence, Bostrom's implication of Israeli Jews in the heinous business of organ-theft murders is a form of demonization.

Whether such demonization rises to the level of anti-Semitism, in its classical sense, is open to question. Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli political figures are convinced that this is precisely what's behind Bostrom's apparent falsifications, which many have likened to the historical blood libel charges leveled against Jews since medieval times. I am inclined to agree that Bostrom's article smacks of special hatred toward Israel and, by extension, toward Jews. (I also think that Israel's demand that Sweden issue a formal retraction and apology is ridiculous; Bostrom's defamatory words should be countered verbally in public discourse, not by diplomatic pressure and censorious laws.) To my mind, the extraordinary bias of this hack-journalistic methodology does amount to anti-Semitism, even if it claims to direct itself against the Israeli state and not the Jewish people per se. Context is important here, and like other forms of hatred, the evidence of special bias is cumulative.

As Matthew Cassel points out in the article below, legitimate grievances against Israel for its mistreatment of Palestinians deserve our full attention. By contrast, the muckraking and calumnious tactics Bostrom deploys only harm the cause he would serve and inject the spectre of age-old hatreds into a setting that has already suffered far too much racialized enmity.

Racheli responds:I disagree with Lincoln on the question of whether Bostrom's article is anti-Semitic. It seems clear to me that that the article is a sloppy piece of journalism, and it's very likely that Bostrom's hostility towards Israel and its policies has gotten the best of him to the extent that he doesn't feel obliged to stick with the truth and with the facts at hand. I find this highly regrettable, but in my view it does not establish a hatred of all Jews as the motivating force: It's possible that Bostrom hates all Jews, in the same way that it's possible that Israel traffics in young Palestinians' organs. But there isn't sufficient evidence to support it. I do acknowledge, though, that assigning intent is a tricky, interpretation-based affair, and the varying conclusions people draw are based on much more than the stuff contained in a single article.

On Friday I was invited to appear on Press TV (Iran`s international English-language satellite channel) alongside Donald Bostrom, a Swedish journalist who authored the recent article about the Israeli army stealing the organs of young Palestinian men it had killed in 1992 during the first Palestinian intifada. I surprised the producers at Press TV who I don`t think invited me to argue the article`s legitimacy, but instead reaffirm its claims.

After the show, a producer in Tehran thanked me and told me that it was nice to get someone from the `other side.` But I had to make it clear, that I was not from the `other side` as she meant it. I support uncovering human rights violations and war crimes wherever they occur, especially in Palestine, where I have worked for many years. I do believe Bostrom`s intentions were to do much the same but that his process was highly irresponsible. The problem is not that he is accusing the State of Israel of wrongdoing, but that he is making accusations of what would amount to extremely serious war crimes while providing absolutely no evidence to support his claims. Rather than advancing the cause of Palestinian human rights, such behavior hurts the many organizations, journalists, activists and others working tirelessly to expose and document Israel`s numerous violations of international law committed against Palestinians and people of other Arab nations in recent decades.

Bostrom`s article lacks credibility for a number of reasons. In the opening paragraph he tells the story of Levy Rosenbaum, a Jewish man in New York linked to illegal trafficking in human organs with counterparts in Israel. While Rosenbaum has admitted to buying organs from destitute Israelis, until now there has been nothing outside Bostrom`s article to suggest that this trade involved the organs of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army.

Rosenbaum has also admitted to being involved in the trade for the past ten years which is well after 1992, when Bostrom claims the organ theft may have occurred in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Other than Israel being involved, there is no evidence to make a direct link between these incidents. It is poor journalism on Bostrom`s part to use a timely event and try to connect it to something that happened nearly two decades earlier without offering any evidence.

Bostrom also refers to Palestinians disappearing for days at a time and who have in many cases returned dead. This is known to have occurred before, especially Palestinians being arrested and taken to detention centers without the Israeli authorities bothering to inform the families. This is something that has been reported on and documented by numerous Palestinian human rights organizations. Israel may have even performed autopsies on the bodies without the families` consent, as Bostrom reports. He publishes a horrific photograph of one of these bodies alongside the article, but again, this is not proof that organs in that person`s body were removed and sold, or given to Israelis in need, as the author implies.

One must also ask why this story was not covered in 1992, when Bostrom claims the organ theft occurred. It seems this would be a more appropriate time to expose such a story when bodies of those killed by Israel could have been autopsied to determine for a fact whether or not organs from those Palestinians killed by Israel were in fact removed. In the Press TV interview, Bostrom claimed that he did approach many Palestinian, Israeli and international organizations but none, minus the UN, heeded his call for further investigation. Yet, he only makes brief mention of this in the article and says the UN staff was prevented from doing anything about his findings.

Unlike Bostrom`s reporting, when most Palestinian human rights organizations or other journalists have uncovered Israeli violations, they are sure to provide well-documented evidence to prove beyond a doubt that such violations were in fact committed. Even though Israel has made it very difficult for both Palestinian and international journalists and human rights workers to practice inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, many have risked their lives to see that evidence of Israel`s crimes is uncovered and reported.

Many such well-documented violations committed over recent decades include: willful killing of civilians, including children; torture; extrajudicial executions; depriving a civilian population of food and other necessities; blackmailing patients in need of medical care to try to turn them into informers; wanton and deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure; punitive home demolitions; and illegal use of restricted weapons against civilian targets, including white phosphorus and cluster bombs. The list of UN resolutions and international treaties violated by Israel is far too long to list here, although these violations have been carefully documented over many years by human rights organizations that have worked tirelessly for their enforcement.

I am not trying to argue here that Israel or some Israelis could never have trafficked stolen Palestinian organs. In a place like Palestine, however, where evidence of Israeli war crimes has never been difficult to find -- despite Israel`s consistent efforts to block investigations -- those concerned with holding Israel accountable should not level allegations of such seriousness without producing some evidence.

Following Israel`s winter invasion of Gaza -- during which more than 1,500 Palestinians were killed, the vast majority civilians -- several well-known international human rights groups issued reports containing irrefutable evidence of shocking crimes. Israeli soldiers who participated in the attack on Gaza have been quoted in the Israeli press talking about how they or their colleagues committed atrocities, such as shooting dead unarmed civilians, including children.

The fact that Bostrom did not offer evidence for his organ theft claims has given Israel an enormous propaganda gift. Because he offered nothing more than conjecture and hearsay, Israel has launched a major campaign casting itself as an aggrieved victim of `blood libel.` This allows Israel to distract attention from the mountains of evidence of well-documented war crimes, and even to discredit real evidence. If there is no evidence behind the organ theft claims, Israel can argue, then maybe all these other claims about crimes in Gaza are equally dubious.

Predictably, Israel and its supporters launched a ridiculous campaign not only targeting Bostrom and his newspaper, but against all of Sweden and its population of more than nine million. Some have started an online petition calling for the boycott the furniture retailer IKEA, founded in Sweden, while the Israeli interior ministry claims it will freeze the entry visas for Swedish journalists. Furthermore, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is demanding that the Swedish government declare its `condemnation` of the article. This is a strategy that Israel could not use in response to the Gaza war crimes reports. With each violation clearly documented and coming from a wide range of credible sources and testimonies, Israel could not demand that governments condemn the human rights groups and publications that disseminated them. Israel predictably objected to the reports issued about Gaza, but tried to bring as little attention to them as possible -- understandably, because thereports are irrefutable.

But Israel has done all it can to draw attention and create an international crisis out of the organ theft allegation. Even the president of the Official Council of Jewish Communities in Sweden has condemned the response, saying that Israel `had blown the issue completely out of proportion.` As Israel does with increasingly little discrimination, it has claimed that the article was motivated by `anti-Semitism.` So far, Sweden has withstood Israel`s hectoring that its government must take a position on an article published in a free press. But given the record of pandering to Israel, it remains to be seen if Sweden will stick to this position. If Sweden does bow down to Israeli pressure, it would set a frightening precedent for journalists whereby Israel can affect a state`s policy of freedom for the press.

Israel`s tactics of intimidation are not justified by Bostrom`s article, which is nothing more than an example of irresponsible journalism and publishing. The editors at the Swedish daily Aftonbladet who published this piece, should`ve sent it back to the author and told him to investigate the issue further until he found evidence to corroborate his claims. If there is any basis for the organ theft allegations, diligent reporting would bring it out. As Malcolm X said, `Truth is on the side of the oppressed;` all we need is to collect the evidence to prove it.

Monday, August 24, 2009

While Ben Gurion University professor Neve Gordon is attacked and threatened by university and government officials for supporting a boycott of Israel in the Los Angeles Times, the oppositional work of Haggai Ram, another faculty member of Ben Gurion Univ., has just been warmly reviewed in Dawn, the largest, most influential English-language daily in Pakistan. The review, by Joel Gordon, of the University of Arkansas, placed on the first page of the Books and Authors section of Dawn, says, "Iran's revolution appears to hang in the balance. … Yet the Israeli government, as if stuck in a time warp, continues to publicly promote its right — and ultimate readiness — to launch an attack against the Islamic republic." Critiquing this stand and offering a nuanced analysis of its context and history, "Haggai Ram's provocative, even 'blasphemous' study confronts the 'logic' — or illogic — of Israel's 'obsession' with the Islamic republic."

"Are fears of 'nucleotheism' engendered to perpetuate a national myth of perpetual holocaust and exploit western terror of international jihad?" Gordon asks. Ram and his book, he says, suggest "that the end game is a body politic that is distracted from more pressing unsolved local issues."

Iran's revolution appears to hang in the balance. As rifts within the ruling elite are played out in the streets, the world watches with anticipation, not least the United States which struggles to walk a fine line between encouraging dissent and forging a new understanding with the clerical regime.

Yet the Israeli government, as if stuck in a time warp, continues to publicly promote its right — and ultimate readiness — to launch an attack against the Islamic republic. Israelis may well have reason to look upon Iran with suspicion, even apprehension. Yet the 'rising tide of anxiety' amongst average citizens is, according to the author of Iranophobia, 'utterly irrational and exceedingly disproportionate' to any threat that may emanate from Tehran.

Haggai Ram's provocative, even 'blasphemous' study confronts the 'logic' — or illogic — of Israel's 'obsession' with the Islamic republic. An Israeli historian of Iran who is tied to neither the defense establishment nor intelligence community — a rare commodity — Ram is well positioned to place Israeli-Iranian relations in context, to dismantle persistent mythologies, and to even suggest that Israel's worst nightmares are rooted deeper within its own changing society and polity than in Iran's aggressive intentions or capabilities.

If the Islamic revolution has run out of energy, as many asserted well before recent elections, Ram recalls it as a central moment in the 20th century. Israelis, much like discontented Iranians, especially those too young to recall the Peacock throne, have fallen victim to the 'art of forgetting' history. Israeli Iran experts, perpetuate this by engaging in 'massive self-censorship.'

In the early days of the revolution they sought to convey 'the complexity of events' and the diversity of social forces that toppled the Pahlavis. Some even celebrated the popular uprising — at least until it turned in Khomeini's favour, after which it became all too common to bemoan Iran's turn from the Shah's modernisation project, however brutal, back to the 'dark ages.'

Not all to be sure. Ram recalls one Iran hand calling on the Shah to save his throne by massacring his own people. He reminds his readers just how close Israeli-Pahlavi ties were. As an emergent nation Israel successfully positioned itself as an ally of other 'third world' Afro-Asian states, but Iran was always special.

The Zionist and Pahlavi nation-building projects shared a desire to stand outside and above the wider Arab and Muslim world in which they found themselves trapped, to produce 'new' Jews and Iranians who were 'deracinated replicas of Europeans.'

Israel's 'unqualified endorsement' of the Shah's 'oppressive modernity' translated into a relationship with SAVAK, the secret police, which was second only to the Americans'. The recollections of a 'wondrous love affair' that Ram has read in the memoirs of secret agents, diplomats, and businessmen, is of course understood differently by many Iranians.

Israeli anxieties regarding the course of Iran's revolution cut much deeper than the loss of trading privileges and non-Eastern cultural affinity. Ruhollah Khomeini's power grab paralleled a revolution in Israeli politics; the rise of Menachim Begin's right-wing Likud coalition, fueled by the rage of Israel's disenfranchised 'Oriental' Jewish population.

To the European secular socialist Zionist pioneers who founded the state, the foreign, overwhelmingly religious crowds that carried Begin on their shoulders and anointed him 'king' looked strikingly similar to the rebellious Iranians who embraced Khomeini and the mullahs. Shimon Peres bid them 'go back to Persia'; the leftist Meretz party, standing against the threat of a state ruled by religious law, proclaimed that Israel was 'not Iran.'

In recent years Iranophobia is clearly focused on Iran's resurgence as a regional power, particularly in light of links to local antagonists in Lebanon and Palestine. Is Iran merely a scapegoat for Israel's inability to defeat Hizbollah in 2006 — an offensive war depicted as a defensive campaign versus Iran — and Hamas last winter?

Are fears of 'nucleotheism' engendered to perpetuate a national myth of perpetual holocaust and exploit western terror of international jihad? Ram downplays conspiracy theories, but suggests that the end game is a body politic that is distracted from more pressing unsolved local issues.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 'may very well be a despicable anti-Semite,' but he deserves to be quoted properly. Rather than threaten to 'wipe Israel off the map,' he has asserted that Zionism has — as many argue about his own revolution — reached an historical impasse.

The ongoing attachment of Iranian Jews to their ancestral homeland, the unwillingness of so many to leave Iran in the early years of Israeli statehood, and their vocal support for Iran's nuclear programme and its attachment to Palestinian nationalist aspirations challenges the Zionist 'redemptive' narrative and raison d'etre of the Jewish state.

Ram sees a glimmer of hope in growing reluctance to blindly accept state dogma regarding Iran (recent polls suggest that most Israelis no longer favour military action). If his book is read and not simply dismissed as blasphemy, Israelis might better understand and question their complex relationship with an old ally.

Joel Gordon is a professor of history at the University of Arkansas

Iranophobia: The logic of an Israeli obsession By Haggai RamStanford University Press, CAISBN 978-0-8047-6068-3220pp. $19.95

Saturday, August 22, 2009

At present, only 4% of Palestinians who are citizens of Israel live off agriculture. The fact that most Palestinian land was confiscated and given to Jewish agricultural settlements turned Palestinian society from being a primarily agrarian society to a landless populace.

Here are some startling statistics:According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2008 only 40 per cent of Arab men of working age participated in the workforce, compared with 56 per cent for Israel as a whole, and only 19 per cent of Arab women, compared with 56 per cent of Jewish women. Half of Israel's Arab citizens live below the poverty line. Many would jump at the opportunity to work, though a job in Israel today is not always a way of escaping the poverty cycle.

Unfortunately for them, a major aim of Israel's labor policies is: anyone but Palestinians.

As an increasing number of people feel the grip of the global financial crisis, Israel's familiar bugbear has been wheeled out yet again: deport the foreign workers! True to form, the newly appointed Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz has decided that the deportation of 100,000 migrant laborers will improve the economic situation.

We've been here before. In 2003, Israel launched its first major campaign to reduce the number of "foreign workers," as they are known in Hebrew (ovdim zarim). Now the workers are preparing themselves for another round of brutal operations by the infamous immigration police.

In Israel's labor market, deportations of "foreign workers" are followed by imports of others to take their place. Yet, Israel has an abundant supply of local workers – why does it still prefer the migrant laborers? Because they are not Arabs.

There are about 250,000 migrant laborers in Israel, mostly from the Philippines and Thailand, working mainly in agriculture, nursing and construction. For a country of just under 7.4 million citizens, this is an enormous number. More than half are considered illegal – some have outstayed their allotted time, some are victims of fraud, and some have violated the terms of their employment, often through no fault of their own. With unemployment rising again, it seems logical to employ Israel's citizens before turning to outside labor, but, as usual, the picture is more complicated.

The truth is, Israel is confused. Since the 1980s, when the country began a process of deregulation with the aim of hitching its markets to the global economy, Israel has been torn between the myth of Jewish solidarity and the Zionist enterprise on the one hand, and the demands of the growing economic elite on the other. Bluntly put, it wants to keep the country open to Jews only but have access to workers willing to do the dirty work for peanuts.

In the past, Israel employed Arabs as cheap labor – both Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians from the Occupied Territories (who have no Israeli citizenship). Then, in the 1990s, as Israelis opened their eyes to the Oslo Accords, watched their economy grow, and enjoyed the "quiet" that the promise of peace granted them, Palestinians from the Occupied Territories found themselves stuck, cut off from their source of livelihood in Israel by renewed policies of military closures around the Territories. Meanwhile, Palestinian Israelis watched their jobs disappear as factories were moved abroad and as they competed with a million newly arrived Russian olim (Jewish immigrants) for the remaining labor-intensive work.

Changing government priorities, the Intifada and globalization opened the way for migrant laborers. Companies owned by the Histadrut (the General Federation of Labor), publicly owned enterprises, were sold off. State support for agriculture diminished as the long-declining ideology of working the land finally collapsed. The new owners of Histadrut companies, building contractors and farmers, sought sources of labor that would enable them to compete in the now unprotected market. Migrant labor fitted the bill.

Farmers and contractors explain their preference for foreign labor by claiming there is no local workforce. "Israelis aren't willing to do those kind of jobs," so the mantra goes. And it does, indeed, seem that few Israeli Jews are willing to do hard manual labor anymore. But there are Israelis willing to do those kinds of jobs – Israel's Palestinian citizens.

Anyone But Palestinians

The "Arab sector," as it is known here, struggles against insufficient investment and inadequate infrastructure. Before 1948, the Palestinian Arab economy was mostly agrarian. Today, only about 4 per cent of the Palestinian Israeli population lives off agriculture, yet other options for earning a living are scarce. Few Arab towns have any significant industrial parks, and the primary industry that once employed Arabs – textiles – has been moved overseas.

According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2008 only 40 per cent of Arab men of working age participated in the workforce, compared with 56 per cent for Israel as a whole, and only 19 per cent of Arab women, compared with 56 per cent of Jewish women. Half of Israel's Arab citizens live below the poverty line. Many would jump at the opportunity to work, though a job in Israel today is not always a way of escaping the poverty cycle.

And, if these workers prove insufficient, there are thousands more on the other side of the "security fence." Israel has administered the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, flooding the Territories with its products, thereby – deliberately or otherwise – preventing the development of local industry and discouraging entrepreneurship. Residents of the Territories have also provided Israel with builders, cleaners and agricultural laborers for thirty years. The result is an underdeveloped Palestinian economy, entirely dependent on Israel, and a huge workforce eager to work in Israel.

The proof of their willingness to work can be found at Israel's major intersections, where Palestinians from the West Bank wait each morning in the hope that some contractor will offer them work. Most of them have gone through hell to get around the checkpoints and across the separation wall, a dangerous – occasionally fatal – journey of many hours. Many sleep in makeshift camps such as abandoned building sites just minutes from Tel Aviv's chic boulevards, and return to the West Bank and their families only on the weekends.

It is difficult to estimate the number of West Bank residents working in Israel. According to the Workers Advice Centre, an NGO active mainly among agricultural and construction workers, in 2005 there were around 20,000 working legally (with a permit), in addition to at least that number working illegally. The difficulties involved in entering Israel enable employers to claim that Palestinians from the West Bank are an unreliable labor force.

Police raids, a common nightmare for illegal Palestinian workers, aim to intimidate the workers and put on a show for Israelis, so fearful of "infiltrators." The workers are deported and may lose whatever job they were lucky enough to find, but everyone knows that they will be back as soon as they have negotiated their way through the porous "security" system: work in Israel is in great demand.

Clearly, Israel has easy access to willing labor, so why does Israel maintain such a large migrant labor force? The principal reason has little to do with the lack of a local workforce. The migrant workers are simply cheaper and easier to exploit.

Thais and Filipinos

Most migrant laborers in Israel today are Thais, working primarily in agriculture, and Filipinos, working primarily as caregivers. Many arrive with huge debts after paying middlemen between $6,000 and $9,000 in mediation fees (through arrangements that are mostly illegal). However, their wages in Israel amount to less than the legal minimum because some of the long hours they work are not remunerated.

Their employers save money also by not paying any peripheral benefits such as pension fund payments, sick pay, annual leave or maternity leave. Migrant workers rarely receive dismissal compensation, seniority-based wage increases, or overtime pay. In addition, wages are often paid in arrears, obliging the worker to remain with the same employer for fear of losing earnings.

Migrant workers are legally subject to the collective agreements negotiated by the Histadrut, but law enforcement is minimal, and the state's representatives almost invariably take the employers' side in any dispute.

The Israeli and Thai governments have been in contact with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in the hope of controlling the black market in mediation fees and permits, but so far without results. In 2006, Israel's Foreign Ministry refused to sign an agreement with the IOM, but in 2007 the IOM signed an agreement with Thailand that will facilitate supervision of recruitment of Thai workers destined for Israel. Also, since June 2008, only workers from countries that have bilateral agreements with Israel have been permitted to enter.

It remains to be seen whether these agreements will reduce the exploitation of migrant labor. Unfortunately for the workers, there are interests vested in the current system: many agencies in Israel as well as in the workers' countries of origin stand to lose an extremely lucrative business if mechanisms for control are put into place.

However, the issue of Israel's labor preferences goes beyond economic calculations and concerns the identity of the workers themselves. In any discussion about the use of Palestinian labor, security concerns are invariably voiced: "When my father used to go to work in the fields with Arabs," says E. from a kibbutz in the north, "he would take his pistol and be looking over his shoulder all the time. With the Thai workers he feels safe."

Though not everyone feels the threat in quite this way, the government of PM Ariel Sharon decided in 2005 that, by 2008, Palestinians from the Occupied Territories would no longer be working within Israel. Keeping the Palestinian workers out, then, is part of a deliberate policy that borders on demagoguery, playing on the fears of Israeli Jews and strengthening the misleading consensus of "us here, them over there" – misleading, because Israel is "over there" too, with its ever-expanding settlements, and "they" are here in the form of Israel's largely unseen Palestinian citizens.

But security, as always, tells only part of the story. After all, if workers can get into the country from the West Bank, so can others with more insidious objectives. The preference for migrant labor over Palestinian labor stems from something for which "security" serves as a fig leaf: Israel's striving to reduce the Arab presence on this piece of land.

The ideology of separate economies for Jews and Arabs goes back to the days of Jewish settlement in Palestine, when it was feared that cheap Arab labor would discourage European Jews from immigrating. After 1948, freedom of movement for Arab citizens was restricted until 1966, when the military administration was finally lifted. After 1967, Palestinians from the Occupied Territories had the advantage of "disappearing" at the end of the workday, but they, too, were a constant reminder of the local population, which Israel was not ready to acknowledge.

Migrant workers, on the other hand, pose no "demographic threat," particularly if the immigration police keep working. Though many have been here for years, and their children speak Hebrew just like Israeli children, they are deemed a temporary presence. The situation has plumbed new depths of absurdity: farmers consider the migrant Thais to be permanent workers and the local population – Arabs – as seasonal laborers who fill in during temporary labor shortages.

Israel has also succeeded in depoliticising the issue. The hiring of migrant labor is perceived simply as an economic necessity, while questions of identity, the closure of the Occupied Territories, the "security fence" and the "demographic threat" (not to mention workers' rights) are held to be unrelated.

Thus, despite the economic crisis and associated rising unemployment, it is unlikely that Israel will wean its employers off cheap "foreign workers" in favor of opening more employment opportunities to the Arab sector or Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. The current situation is too convenient: migrant labor has enabled Israel to open its borders to the globalized economy without endangering its Jewish identity, while bolstering the myth that Israel can be a country for Jews alone.

In fact, Israel has finally succeeded in doing what it failed to do during the years it was still reliant on cheap Arab labor: it has taken the Arabs out of the market.

Friday, August 21, 2009

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed Neve Gordon, an American-born Jew who has lived in Israel for nearly 30 years and teaches political science at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, reluctantly comes to the conclusion that boycotting Israel may be the only way to save the country from itself. The author of the recent book, Israel's Occupation, Gordon argues that "'on the ground,' the one-state solution (in an apartheid manifestation) is a reality." Arguing that the two-state solution is the only way to reverse apartheid, he has decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign launched by Palestinian activists in July 2005. – Joel Beinin

Lincoln Z. Shlensky adds:

Neve Gordon cites the Bilbao Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Initiative <http://bit.ly/7AI0g> as an appropriate model for creating international pressure on Israel to end the occupation. In Gordon's reading of it, the Bilbao Initiative proposes a process of imposing sanctions that begins by punishing companies doing business in the Occupied Territories and those that reinforce the occupation in other structural ways, and gradually extends such sanctions.

While one may disagree with Gordon's resolutely gradualist interpretation of the Bilbao Initiative, it would be hard to disagree that there is a need for the kinds of initial sanctions he mentions. Indeed, many of those individuals and organizations which do not claim to be advocates of a formal BDS campaign have long argued that punishing the direct beneficiaries of occupation and acting to end Israel's continuing confiscation of Palestinian land are urgent.

Other elements of the Bilbao Initiative that Gordon does not mention, however, are more controversial. For example, Point 5 of the Initiative proposes to "build pressure on the United Nations, governments, local authorities, multilateral bodies, such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the private sector to suspend cooperation with Israel." Such proposals are controversial for two reasons: some believe that they unfairly single out Israel among many rights-violating nations, and should be opposed for this reason alone. Others believe that, tactically, the appearance of singling out Israel for special sanctions may create a backlash against broad-based international efforts to end Israel's occupation at a time when the American administration seems more serious than ever about achieving a resolution.

Such concerns have merit. They need to be addressed directly by supporters of the BDS movement if proposals like the Bilbao Initiative are to gain wider support.

An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it's the only way to save his country.

By Neve GordonAugust 20, 2009

Israeli newspapers this summer are filled with angry articles about the push for an international boycott of Israel. Films have been withdrawn from Israeli film festivals, Leonard Cohen is under fire around the world for his decision to perform in Tel Aviv, and Oxfam has severed ties with a celebrity spokesperson, a British actress who also endorses cosmetics produced in the occupied territories. Clearly, the campaign to use the kind of tactics that helped put an end to the practice of apartheid in South Africa is gaining many followers around the world.

Not surprisingly, many Israelis -- even peaceniks -- aren't signing on. A global boycott can't help but contain echoes of anti-Semitism. It also brings up questions of a double standard (why not boycott China for its egregious violations of human rights?) and the seemingly contradictory position of approving a boycott of one's own nation.

It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.

I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country's future.

The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. Within this region about 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside. Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews -- whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel -- are citizens of the state of Israel.

The question that keeps me up at night, both as a parent and as a citizen, is how to ensure that my two children as well as the children of my Palestinian neighbors do not grow up in an apartheid regime.

There are only two moral ways of achieving this goal.

The first is the one-state solution: offering citizenship to all Palestinians and thus establishing a bi-national democracy within the entire area controlled by Israel. Given the demographics, this would amount to the demise of Israel as a Jewish state; for most Israeli Jews, it is anathema.

The second means of ending our apartheid is through the two-state solution, which entails Israel's withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders (with possible one-for-one land swaps), the division of Jerusalem, and a recognition of the Palestinian right of return with the stipulation that only a limited number of the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to Israel, while the rest can return to the new Palestinian state.

Geographically, the one-state solution appears much more feasible because Jews and Palestinians are already totally enmeshed; indeed, "on the ground," the one-state solution (in an apartheid manifestation) is a reality.

Ideologically, the two-state solution is more realistic because fewer than 1% of Jews and only a minority of Palestinians support binationalism.

For now, despite the concrete difficulties, it makes more sense to alter the geographic realities than the ideological ones. If at some future date the two peoples decide to share a state, they can do so, but currently this is not something they want.

So if the two-state solution is the way to stop the apartheid state, then how does one achieve this goal?

I am convinced that outside pressure is the only answer. Over the last three decades, Jewish settlers in the occupied territories have dramatically increased their numbers. The myth of the united Jerusalem has led to the creation of an apartheid city where Palestinians aren't citizens and lack basic services. The Israeli peace camp has gradually dwindled so that today it is almost nonexistent, and Israeli politics are moving more and more to the extreme right.

It is therefore clear to me that the only way to counter the apartheid trend in Israel is through massive international pressure. The words and condemnations from the Obama administration and the European Union have yielded no results, not even a settlement freeze, let alone a decision to withdraw from the occupied territories.

I consequently have decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that was launched by Palestinian activists in July 2005 and has since garnered widespread support around the globe. The objective is to ensure that Israel respects its obligations under international law and that Palestinians are granted the right to self-determination.

In Bilbao, Spain, in 2008, a coalition of organizations from all over the world formulated the 10-point Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign meant to pressure Israel in a "gradual, sustainable manner that is sensitive to context and capacity." For example, the effort begins with sanctions on and divestment from Israeli firms operating in the occupied territories, followed by actions against those that help sustain and reinforce the occupation in a visible manner. Along similar lines, artists who come to Israel in order to draw attention to the occupation are welcome, while those who just want to perform are not.

Nothing else has worked. Putting massive international pressure on Israel is the only way to guarantee that the next generation of Israelis and Palestinians -- my two boys included -- does not grow up in an apartheid regime.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

The first is from Maher Hannoun, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem who was evicted with his family on August 2nd from the house in Sheikh Jarrah in which he was born and has lived for 51 years. The eviction of the Hannoun and Ghawi families has brought widespread international condemnation. (See the JPN post and video of the day after the eviction at http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2009/08/israels-hamas-sheikh-jarrah-evictions.html) Nevertheless, less than an hour after the families were evicted, settlers moved into their houses. The Hannoun and Ghawi families are now homeless, living in the street right outside their homes. As Maher Hannoun points out, even now graciously addressing the Israeli people, this is but one case of many in East Jerusalem.

The second letter is from Udi Aloni, renowned filmmaker and son of Shulamit Aloni, longtime civil rights activist and former Minister of Education, to Leonard Cohen. Cohen, scheduled to play in Tel Aviv in September, has been the target of a concerted international boycott campaign. (JPN also recently posted the guidelines by PACBI for cultural boycott efforts here: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2009/07/pacbi-guidelines-for-applying.html)As a result he added a concert in Ramallah, had the concert cancelled by Palestinians, and is now donating proceeds from the concert to a fund administered by Amnesty International.

Aloni's moving letter, originally published in YNet, the website of Israel's second largest newspaper, was not translated into English by the paper. It was published in English by Occupation Magazine. Money quote (but please read the whole thing):

" After endless consideration, I finally realized that the question that should be asked is not whether we support or oppose a cultural boycott. It is not even whether the Palestinians were right for cancelling your concert in Ramallah. The question is really whether we should comply with the request of those Palestinians who have chosen the path of non-violent resistance in their struggle against occupation and racism. It may be difficult for me, emotionally, to accept a cultural boycott; I already described how I failed in my attempt to raise that placard during your show in New York. That is why this time I will comply with their wishes. With my actions I will offer those denied self-determination the right to determine their response. By accepting their right to decide, I will empower those who've been disempowered for so long and help to restore the sovereignty they lack. That is what solidarity really means."

--Rebecca Vilkomerson

A Letter to the Israeli People

I am appealing to you as an Israeli citizen:

When your government denied my family our rights in the past, many ordinary Israelis did not look away. Instead, they stood with us. They showed us that Israelis are able to look past our differences and stand up for what is right.

I call on the Israeli people once again to help.

Early on Sunday August 2nd, more than 200 armed police smashed our windows, barged into our house and threw us out. They said we were living in the house illegally because Jews owned the land upon which our homes were built- over a hundred years ago. But, immediately after we were forced out, extremist settlers took over and occupied our home. They are still there now.

My wife, children and I have spent the past seven days and nights in the streets, and there is no end for us in sight. Overnight, we were made homeless. I hope you can help us seek the justice denied to us.

Israel calls itself a democracy. If so, the government is answerable to you, the Israeli people.

My family's situation is not an isolated case. Stories like ours are being played out all the time in Jerusalem and will continue. It is being perpetuated by the government of Israel in your name, in the name of the Israeli people, against UN resolutions and international law.

Please, stand with us again in our time of need, and help my family and I and those like us, to get our homes back.

We need your support. With each new day spent in the streets, our time is running out. Please stop the Israeli government from abusing us in Sheikh Jarrah in your name.

It was two months ago that I had the privilege of seeing you perform in New York. You might say I'd been waiting thirty-five years for it. I remembered the first time I'd heard your music in Israel, and you could tell from my smile "that tonight would be fine." As I arrived outside the show, I met some old friends—partners in the struggle—who were demonstrating across the street: "Leonard, don't play Israel!" After all the kissing and warm embraces, I told them that I really must go in so that I wouldn't miss the opening song. They nodded and slipped a small placard in my hand, then warily asked if I would hold it up during the show: "Leonard, don't play Israel!" Amid those hearts that burn like coal, the sign seared my hands like hot coal too.

I was there with my only daughter. Your wonderful voice had been a soundtrack to my life, and now I wanted to share that with her. I recalled the day, when we were living in New York, that her grandfather died in far-off Beersheba. She lit candles around her bed to the strains of "Hallelujah," and the two of us wept over Grandpa Jukey. Jukey was a wonderful man, who apparently died from a cancer he contracted at the Dimona nuclear reactor, a modern-day temple to the new God that has "become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds." My daughter had never heard "Hallelujah" before, and I hadn't yet told her about the reactor in Dimona, but that's when she first fell in love with your music. Now, in New York, we had come to take advantage of that brief moment of kindness that you so generously shared with us.

Who am I to tell you: "Don't play Israel"? Your voice, so mature, so moving, so shattered, could shatter even a heart of stone. And yet, that placard still seared my fingers—fingers belonging to an Israeli and a Jew who believes that we are ultimately responsible for the fact that the Palestinian people have lived in exile in their own land for the past sixty years. I was hesitant about raising that sign, but just then you came on stage, and sang in your broken, heart-rending voice, "Like a bird on the wire, Like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free." The placard slipped from my hands and the romantic idealism that still fills my soul quivered and shook off years and years of accumulated dust. I sang along as if I was you or you were me. I remembered you well in the Chelsea hotel … and it was if we were there with Janis Joplin herself … I never wanted it to end. You knew who I am and you gave me your all. Then, when the concert was finally over, I got up andlaid the sign gently on my seat. Maybe someone else would raise it.

I was very excited when I first heard that you would be playing in Ramallah. I said to myself, "It's different with him." I always knew that you are not like Paul McCartney and the others. You are a true symbol of art, who is (still) trying to make this world a better place. In New York I heard you sing, "I'm your man." It's true: you are my man, indeed. I called my friends in Ramallah and said, "Let's go see Leonard together," and only then did I learn that the Palestinians had decided to cancel your show. It goes without saying that I was quite disappointed. You are someone who listens, who cares. You are different from all the others. Why must they be so stubborn? Why can't they finally reap the fruits of their success—"Leonard Cohen plays in Palestine!" What right do they have to rob their fellow Palestinians of this chance to hear the best that music has to offer? What could they possibly gain from this boycott of the arts? The very idea of mixing art and politics is veryproblematic, to me at least.

But then my daughter looked me right in the eye, and said in her straightforward way: "Dad, write to Leonard and explain to him why the Palestinians are right to cancel his concert. They don't have the privilege of free access to culture that we have in Tel Aviv or New York. They're tired of all the goodwill gestures and the petty benefits we concede to as an alibi for our own dirty consciences. They want justice, and that's why they are asking: 'Don't go and amuse our occupiers, and then come to us with a consolation prize.'" Her words were so simple, so wise, that as soon as I heard them I knew I had to write to you.

Well, Leonard, maybe you should only play in Palestine. Maybe you should open your heart to the oppressed and not to their oppressors. If you cancel your show in Israel, no other self-respecting artist will perform here. At first, the self-indulgent audience in Tel Aviv will be annoyed at those artists and say that they are all anti-Semites. Over time, however, they will come to realize that they cannot gain acceptance in some escapist fantasy as long as the Occupation continues. Israelis will not join the struggle against the Occupation as long as the Occupation doesn't hurt them directly. Israelis must be told: "The Occupation is not normal. Nothing here is normal, God dammit!"

The Palestinians can afford to miss your show, not because they don't like you or admire your art, and not because they necessarily believe that art should be political. They simply think that the artist Leonard Cohen should side with the oppressed. So much so, in fact, they are even willing to sacrifice this chance to hear a truly great artist like you so that they too can be like that "bird on the wire," finally free. Leonard, I just want you to know that even if you did play in Ramallah, you would not be able to give a show in Gaza, because the 1.5 million people living there are trapped in a prison, where no one comes or goes. To paraphrase you, "The walls of this prison still surround them, and they cannot break away."

You might ask: Why me? Why Leonard Cohen? What about all the other artists who perform in Israel? All I can say is that yours is the fate of the last of the troubadours—the same fate shared by Moses on Mount Nebo. Take it as a compliment that the Palestinians chose you. Someone there must believe that you represent the human conscience. And if Madonna, Depeche Mode, McCartney, and the rest can play only in Israel and only for Israelis, then you can play only in Ramallah and only for Palestinians.

After endless consideration, I finally realized that the question that should be asked is not whether we support or oppose a cultural boycott. It is not even whether the Palestinians were right for cancelling your concert in Ramallah. The question is really whether we should comply with the request of those Palestinians who have chosen the path of non-violent resistance in their struggle against occupation and racism. It may be difficult for me, emotionally, to accept a cultural boycott; I already described how I failed in my attempt to raise that placard during your show in New York. That is why this time I will comply with their wishes. With my actions I will offer those denied self-determination the right to determine their response. By accepting their right to decide, I will empower those who've been disempowered for so long and help to restore the sovereignty they lack. That is what solidarity really means.

Leonard, I truly admire you as a poet. My admiration for you and your work is unconditional, and will continue unabated regardless of whether you decide to play Israel or not. I am not boycotting you at all, and I will send all my friends to hear you sing anywhere else in the world that you might play. Here, however, in response to the calls of the Palestinian people, in solidarity with a people denied their basic rights for the past sixty years, as a Jew, and as a citizen of Israel who supports the non-violent struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom, equality, and justice, I regret that I will not be able to attend this show, this time. This is the one place where I cannot allow the placard to slip from my hands. I cannot be derelict in my duty to help tear down the roadblocks and walls. Because here in Israel-Palestine, only when all of the inhabitants who share this very special place can come to see your show, regardless of their race or ethnicity, could I possibly sit backin my seat, close my eyes, and sing with you: "The holy or the broken, Hallelujah!"

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

The following talk was given by Tamara, a queer activist from Tel Aviv, at a demonstration held in Berlin on August 7th, in solidarity with the Lesbian Gay Bi Trans community in Israel, following the mass shooting at the Tel Aviv LGBT youth center, killing two and injuring 15. Tamara's words at the Berlin demo, attended by some 2000 people, expressly and clearly linked the gun violence let loose at the LGBT center with Israel's militarized hypermasculine gun culture and connected the institutional persecution of queers in Israel with the violent institutional persecution and oppression of other groups and minorities; Palestinians, migrant workers, dissenting protesters. "Homophobia is racism," Tamara said. "Racism is homophobia."

Now 2 of them are dead many wounded. Some teenagers outed on a hospital bed.

When the news of the murder came, it was all too easy for me to picture the scene - I used to spend most of my waking hours in this secluded basement flat in central Tel Aviv, the offices of the Israeli GLBT association, Haaguda, working on Pride and AIDS awareness events.

We felt very safe there. Confidant. We had the of City Tel Aviv on our side, hanging rainbow flags on demand. We had the police doing our bidding instead of detaining and forbidding.

Ok, we had to swallow a few LGBT - phobic jokes from officers, bureaucrats, and commercial sponsors. But we thought it was a small price to pay for ten's of thousands marching in the streets of Tel Aviv, safe and proud, landing courage to countless kids across the country.

The price we paid now isn't small. It is immeasurable. The life of 2. The health of 15 , a collective trauma.

I do not feel safe now In Tel Aviv. Our strong hold. Our ghetto. I feel grief stricken and furious and betrayed.

I want to know who was this man in a ski mask dealing death in whose name. Was it a homophobic zealot? A fascist? A crazed family member or even a lover? How can I spot his kind and seek shelter when I recognize danger?

Maybe I should simply watch out for man with machine guns.

But this if far from simple In Israel, where most young men are drafted at 18, many issued a gun. Reserves soldiers – the entire able boded male population – often take their gun home too. There are guns on the bus, guns in Cafes, guns in restaurants, guns on the trains and the beach. Security guards and police have pistols. Settlers carry fire arms where ever they go.

In fact, there are probably only 3 segments of the population in Israel that are less likely to have access to guns: Work migrants, Palestinians, and ultra religious Jews.

Yesterday the Israeli police accused the LGBTQ communities of prematurely calling the murders a hate crime. Of inciting hate against other minority populations.

I agree with the police- it is too easy to point the finger at the extreme religious parties. Or at immigrants. Better look for the real villains: Better accuse the policemen who on Sunday called the supporters of the evacuated families in east Jerusalem, filthy fagots - When Many of them arrived directly from a memorial demo protesting the murders in Tel Aviv. Better investigate law enforcers calling conscientious objectors stupid dykes while smashing their heads on the pavement. Better be ware of the police arresting and bashing queer activists in Central Tel Aviv on the very same day as the murders, after they have tried to protect refugees and their children from being deported.

Better point the finger at the soldiers who kill peace loving men and youth in none violent demos in Palestine, and round up others in the dead of night.

I accuse them of creating a society of hatred and brute force where no minority is safe.

But it is also too easy to blame the police. The police is only a symptom, a tool of the government and the state. The same government who did nothing when calls for our blood where heard from its benches. The same state that it's president, Shimeon Peres, objected in 2007 to the Pride parade in Jerusalem in – where 3 people where stabbed only 2 years earlier.

Many of us in the Jewish LGBTQ community in Israel believed we would be safe if we will "be like everyone else" be mothers, solders, consumers. Be poster boys and girls for "the only democracy in the middle east". Be a tourist attraction.

We were told that we could be safe if we distance ourselves from any hint of otherness. Because "the other" draws fire.

We are not safe. We are being murdered. And in order to protect our self we should be nothing like everyone else. We should demand they put away the guns they use to shoot us. We should denounce violence and repression of other minorities. We should honor the murdered by remembering – Homophobia is Racism. Racism is Homophobia.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

The eviction by Israeli authorities of two Palestinian families (53 residents in total, including 19 minors) from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem on August 2 has produced extensive international condemnation. The evictions were authorized by Israeli courts in a highly controversial decision (here's a timeline of the 37-year case: <http://bit.ly/3xrPNd>), and the Netanyahu administration's effort to hastily enforce the ruling seems intended to fortify Israel's disputed claim to sole sovereignty over Jerusalem. Beyond the shameful events themselves, what is particularly outrageous, writes Jerry Haber (the pseudonym of an Orthodox Jewish Studies professor who divdes his time between Israel and the US), is how Israeli national radio has dishonestly framed the information about the evictions of the al-Ghawi and al-Hanoun families.

Haber's article <http://bit.ly/ZlcuG> is a must-read, because it details a typical case in which the Israeli government-run media presents a version of events that fits the government's deeply distorted ethno-nationalist narrative, rather than the facts. He also dissects the blatant falsehoods of the Netanyahu administration's claim that Arabs can live anywhere in Jerusalem, and therefore so should Jews.

Haber concludes: "if you are a decent human being, you cannot but shout, My God, how long will this robbery -- or to use the Biblical Hebrew word, this 'Hamas' --continue? Isn't what we stole after 1948 and 1967 enough?"

In response to tensions between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations generated by incidents such as this, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman adds some surprisingly blunt criticisms <http://bit.ly/2RPn5U> of Israel's ongoing settlement activity -- which, he remarks, has been greatly abetted by major American Jewish organizations:

"For years, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the pro-Israel lobby, rather than urging Israel to halt this corrosive process, used their influence to mindlessly protect Israel from U.S. pressure on this issue and to dissuade American officials and diplomats from speaking out against settlements. Everyone in Washington knows this, and a lot of people -- people who care about Israel -- are sick of it.

"The Times's Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, captured the we-are-untouchable arrogance of the settlers last week when he quoted Rabbi Yigael Shandorfi, leader of a religious academy at the settlement of Nahliel, calling Mr. Obama in a speech 'that Arab they call a president.'"

--Lincoln Shlensky

Sarah Anne Minkin adds:

These evictions are also a story about the abuse of the law by a supposed democratic regime. Both Jerry Haber's post and this article by Marcey Gayer <http://bit.ly/zqWts> describe the ways in which the courts and other governmental bodies, including the Israel Lands Administration, use the legal methods at their disposal to dispossess Palestinians and make material and symbolic claims -- of both land and history -- for Israel's Jewish inhabitants. Note, too, the heavy involvement of the American doctor and casino magnate, Irving Moskowitz, who has a hand in much of the settlement building and dispossession of Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Mairav Zonshein and Joseph Dana have a new video on the evictions, including an interview with the father of the Hanoun family, evicted yesterday: <http://bit.ly/n75Lk>

In July, President Obama called on Israel to halt settlement expansion in East Jerusalem; Israel continues to defy the U.S., evicting Palestinians and moving Jewish settlers into their homes under the protection of the Israeli Defense Force. A short video on the Judaization of East Jerusalem, focusing specifically on the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, is posted here: <http://bit.ly/1XNcJ>

Here is short testimony from Ofra Ben-Artzi about being arrested while trying to visit the evicted Palestinians: <http://bit.ly/sqOLi> (she's Netanyahu's sister-in-law and mother of the long-jailed military refuser Yonatan Ben-Artzi)

And here is Ha'aretz's article on Clinton's objection to the evictions, which also includes quotes from Egyptian & Swedish diplomats about them: <http://bit.ly/AkhW8>

Joel Beinin adds:

Stand Up for Jerusalem has posted videos <http://bit.ly/xu92J> of Israeli police evicting two Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem at 5:00 am on August 2. One of the families, the Hijazi family, claims to have deeds to the property dating to the 19th century. The Sephardic Community Committee also claims to have owned the properties before the 1948 War. Twenty-eight Palestinian refugee families were resettled in Sheikh Jarrah by the UN and the Jordanian government, which occupied East Jerusalem during the war. After Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 they were granted the status of "protected" tenants (meaning ordinarily they could not be evicted). The putative Jewish owners claimed the two families were delinquent in their rent and therefore subject to eviction. With the consent of the Sephardic Community Committee, settlers have already occupied the homes.

This appears to be a further step in the process of "judaizing" Sheikh Jarrah, a project which has been under way for some time. Nahalat Shimon International, a settler-related real estate group which also claims to have an Ottoman-era deed, has been seeking to build a 200-unit settlement named Shimon Ha-Tzadik in the area. Settlers already occupy several other houses in the neighborhood.

A full report on the legal background to the case is available at the website of 'Ir 'Amim, an NGO that seeks an equitable and shared Jerusalem in the framework of an agreed political future. <http://bit.ly/1bu3Fd>

The Sheikh Jarrah evictions have aroused a storm of international protest from the USA, UK, the EU, Sweden, Egypt, and others. Secretary of State Clinton called the eviction "a very regrettable action," and the Israeli Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, was called in for a scolding. Verbal protests seem unlikely to be enough to halt the Netanyahu government's determination to build more Jewish colonies in East Jerusalem.